Reading is a popular recreation, and the authorities maintain a circulating library, the books being changed with every relief.
— from Lightships and Lighthouses by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

So the king, on the 20th November, 1596, had publicly revoked all the assignments, mortgages, and other deeds by which the royal domains; revenues, taxes, and other public property had been transferred or pledged for moneys already advanced to merchants, banker, and other companies or individuals, and formally took them again into his own possession, on the ground that his exertions in carrying on this long war to save Christianity from destruction had reduced him to beggary, while the money-lenders, by charging him exorbitant interest, had all grown rich at his expense.
— from History of the United Netherlands, 1590-99 — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

I lingered on the beach for nearly half an hour, in the expectation that some of the natives might possibly return and thus afford me an opportunity to establish something in the nature of amicable relations with them; but none of them did; eventually, therefore, I got the boat afloat again and made sail on our way back to the wreck, abandoning for the moment all idea of further exploration.
— from The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn by Harry Collingwood

He planned and laid out the old Pennsylvania road across the Alleghany mountains, and led the advance of the army commanded by General Forbes, which took possession of Fort Du Quesne in 1758.
— from Memoirs of the Generals, Commodores and other Commanders, who distinguished themselves in the American army and navy during the wars of the Revolution and 1812, and who were presented with medals by Congress for their gallant services by Thomas Wyatt